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- Elmo’s social media account on X was compromised by hackers Sunday. The bad actors posted antisemitic comments and demanded the release of the Epstein files. As of Monday morning, Sesame Workshop had regained control of the account.
The normally upbeat feed of Sesame Street’s most famous redhead took a dark and antisemitic turn Sunday after it was compromised by hackers.
The Twitter/X feed of Elmo began spewing obscenity-filled antisemitic comments on Sunday as well as posting a demand that the Epstein files be released publicly. All totaled, a half-dozen posts were made by the hackers. As of Monday morning, Elmo (well, technically, Sesame Workshop) had regained control of the account and deleted the offending posts.
The posts came just days after the Grok chatbot on X referred to itself as MechaHitler and echoed many antisemitic views. X has since issued an apology for that, saying a system update was to blame, as it caused Grok to refer to “existing X user posts; including when such posts contained extremist views.”
While many of the hacked posts were written in the same third-person style Elmo uses in his posts, the language they used was far different than followers were used to seeing.
While this is the most extreme example, social media posts by Muppets have courted controversy in the past. In 2022, Sesame Street posted a video of Elmo getting a COVID-19 vaccine shot. That set off a war of words with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has previously picked a Twitter fight with Big Bird over the fictional character’s own vaccination status, saying it was “government propaganda…for your 5-year-old!”
Cookie Monster, meanwhile, weighed in on shrinkflation last year, saying he was not a fan since “Me cookies are getting smaller.”
As for Elmo, he’s moving past the hack. His most recent post (made before he lost control of the account) was wishing his furry friend Tango a “Happy Gotcha Day”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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